Properly Subversive/Sherman R. Frederick
After all that Sausalito residents went through to do what the town’s moms and dads thought was the compassionate and right thing to do for the homeless, it ended last month with taxpayers paying the Homeless Union $500,000 in a settlement, part of which gives $18,000 each to the 30-some folks who lived in the tent camp when the deal was reached.
Nice work if you can get it.
The final dollar amount settlement is a drop in the bucket compared to what the city paid to set up and run the camp. It also pales in comparison to the untold dollars lost when the rule of unintended consequences kicked in, making Marinship Park unavailable for the town’s many festivals – festivals that brought in millions to the local economy.
No sense recounting the journey Sausalito’s leaders went through to get to this point. It’s a sad story in which leaders led with their hearts instead of their heads. Mistakes were made. The big lesson? No good deed goes unpunished.
The federal courts have made a mess of what cities and counties can do to control encampments. The Homeless Union is taking full advantage of that uncertainty.
You can argue that the Homeless Union is on the side of angels. Maybe.
But how in gawd’s green earth does giving $18,000 to every homeless person left in Marinship Park solve anything? There’s no accounting for how that money is spent, because you know as well as I that the dirty little secret to homelessness is drugs and mental illness. These underlying factors, I’ll wager, were present in all the people Sausalito just paid $18,000 to scram..
So, when the money runs out after being spent on who knows what, they’ll be back on the streets. If not Sausalito, then Novato or San Anselmo or San Rafael.
It’s an unsatisfying outcome all the way around.
REWRITING HISTORY
I’m sorry that teachers look bad after the pandemic. But it is their own fault.
Get a load of this takedown of Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, by the usually sympathetic USA Today newspaper. In an interview with the USA Today editorial board she was asked if she regretted what she did during the pandemic.
“What I regret is COVID. What I regret is the fear. What I regret is the misinformation. Would I have liked us to have a crystal ball, and know then what we know now, so we could have been more firm about saying, if you do X and Y and Z, we can reopen schools in person? Yeah. Because I think that being in person is most important.”
The editorial board called BS on Weingarten’s attempt to rewrite history.
The board rightly points out: “Weingarten led the charge in pushing back against schools reopening from the beginning. Even as European schools opened to in-person learning in spring 2020, Weingarten told her members to ‘scream bloody murder’ if they felt the slightest bit unsafe.
“And they did.
“Even though top medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and others at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said early on that prioritizing in-person learning was vital for children’s well-being – and outweighed the risks of COVID – teachers unions prevented a return to the classroom in many districts in the fall of 2020.This continued into 2021. Although teachers were placed at the front of the vaccination line, it still wasn’t enough. Nor were the billions in COVID-19 relief dollars sent to schools.
“The scientific guidance was firmly on the side of getting kids back to school – until teachers unions got involved.”
Ouch, teachers. When you lose USA Today …
ONE MORE THING
– When you think about the vastness of interstellar space, the size of our galaxy, how big our planet is and how small we are … am I really – really! – eating too much cheese?
– Why does a duck have tail feathers? To cover his butt quack.
– While reading the dictionary in bed last night, I got up to P.
Somebody’s gotta tell the truth. Until next week, avoid soreheads, laugh a little and always – always! – question authority.
(“Properly Subversive” is commentary written by Sherman R. Frederick for Marinscope Community Newspapers, the “mother ship” of the Novato Advance, San Rafael News-Pointer, Mill Valley Herald, Ross Valley Reporter, Twin City Times and the Sausalito Marin Scope. Mr. Frederick is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Battle Born Media, a news organization dedicated to the preservation of community newspapers. You can reach him by email at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)
The homeless problem has been a shit show. I understand from the recent article in the IJ they are demanding more percs in Novato. How about a satellite dish and widescreen TV.? Why not a state of the art outdoor kitchen? And don’t call it a union. It’s an organization composed of people who don’t work and their lawyers. My family is union, I know what unions do for their members and the organization I refer to doesn’t do anything like that. What are they going to do if Novato doesn’t meet their demands? Go on strike? Call for a work stoppage? As Maynard G Krebbs used to exclaim, “Me work?”